


Til The Night Closed Her Eyes

by poisontaster



Series: new otp [3]
Category: CW Network RPF
Genre: Heartbreak, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Rape/Non-con, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Smoking, Undecided Relationship(s), five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-12
Updated: 2006-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-02 14:58:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5252531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as part of of strippedpink's <a href="http://strippedpink.livejournal.com/tag/new%20otp%20%27verse">new OTP verse</a>, with her kind permission.  Events take place (mostly) during <a href="http://strippedpink.livejournal.com/245213.html">It's Shoot First, Apologize Later</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til The Night Closed Her Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [New OTP](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/156551) by strippedpink. 



**_Five People That Fucked it Up For Him._ **

Breathe, he's thinking. _Breathe, for fuck's sake,_ breathe!

He can't breathe. He was going to catch a cab but even if he could stand up straight, Jensen doesn't want anyone to see him like this. To know. He flattens his hand over his chest like he's going to hold it in place by main force. With his other hand, he traces the crumbling brick of the bar's façade, fumbling sideways towards the yeast-and-rot stench of the alley.

_She's been living with me for the last three months._

_God in Heaven, please don't let me die face down in some alley. I know I haven't been your best son, but even if I deserve it, my mama doesn't. Please, God. Please._ He crouches down on his hunkers, his face hidden in his shaking hand. He tries not to think about how long it's been since he's prayed. For anything.

***

**1\. Joanna.**  
Jensen was bored out of his mind by Joanna before he even asked her out. But he did it anyway. Not because of her (fake) tits or that she could suck like a Hoover. Her words, not his, incidentally; she never stopped talking long enough to get that close to his dick, not that he'd have let her. And Jensen's twisted enough to think he'd probably ace her ass in the dick-sucking competition, but whatever.

No. He went out with her for exactly two very simple reasons.

1) She was a set-up.  
Antonia had called him up on a Tuesday and said, "So if you're serious about this whole thing, you really could use some more visibility." And if he wasn't used to Antonia's lightning fast non sequiturs, he might have been lost. But he remembered.

_"Look, what are we talking about here, Jensen?" Antonia asks, taking off her stylish red glasses and flinging them theatrically down on her desk. "I mean, I've got some stuff lined up if you really want. Derek Finn is putting together a new movie—you remember Derek, right?"_

__Slut. Such a good little slut, yeah, God, the things you can do with that mouth… __

_Yeah, Jensen remembers Derek._

_"Yeah," Jensen says, swallowing hard past the ghosts of come shots past. "I remember. I don't… No, I don't think…"_

_Antonia raises one eyebrow. "Are you okay, Jen?"_

_"No, I'm fine," he says, trying not to squirm. God, he is so much_ cooler _than this, what the hell is wrong with him? "I just… I wanna play it straight for a while."_

_Antonia's mouth twitches. "Straight? You? Oh, Jensen. Honey. What, are you in love or something?"_

_Jensen's heart starts slamming hard and there's that lightheaded sort of pukey panic attack sensation again. His fingers close a little tighter on the arms of the chair. "No," he says, scoffing. "Jesus, Antonia. I just… You know me."_

_"Yeah, Jen," she agrees cautiously. "I know you."_

_"I just… Look, I'll play ball, if that's what it takes. But I'm good. I'm better than… I just want something I got for myself that wasn't on my knees, you know?"_

_"Oh!" Antonia looks first surprised, then enlightened, and Jensen really doesn't want to know what she's thinking as long as she leaves that whole 'love' thing alone._

_"Well, I've got this pilot coming up. Weird, genre thing. WB show all the way. The showrunner isn't real well known, but he's got some good buzz with the suits. And he's above board, all the way, poor bastard. You wanna take a gander at the script?"_

_"Yeah," Jensen says. "Yeah, sure."_

_"Great. I'll send it to you. Where are you staying?"_

_Jesus, he doesn't even know. "Um. Send it to Steve's. Even if I don't stay there, I can pick it up. You got the address, right?"_

_"Lindsay will have it. That woman's a_ machine."

"You still trying to do this 'straight'?" Antonia asks.

"Yeah," Jensen says and studiously does not think of Jared.

"Then, baby, you need to do the straight thing," Antonia says and gives him the address of this week's 'it' restaurant with firm instructions to be there by three.

2) She wasn't Jared Pada-fucking-lecki.  
Which really is the long and short of it, insert-snicker-here. Jensen may end up on the bottom of transactions more often than not, but he still has a pair. Rock hard and hairy, dammit. And more and more, he's starting to feel like somebody strung them on a chain and hung them around Jared's neck. And that never turns out well.

It's not like Jensen's never been in love before—not that he's saying things with Jared are that dire, okay?—but he knows the opening moves of…attachment. Yes. Attachment.

Half the reason he can even stand to be on the Smallville set these days (because let's face it, life as Lana's boyfriend is hardly the biggest of acting stretches, even before they sat him down and told him not to 'out-act the talent') is by imagining what Jared would say about Erica's spanky new tits, or Tom's latest broodfest.

He thinks about Jared too much. He _misses_ Jared too much, when he's not there.

And if he's honest with himself, Joanna's got the least to do with all of this of anybody. Because _he_ was the one with something to prove. It's just he didn't realize until too late that what he was trying to prove is what an idiot he can be.

***

"Allie?"

"Jen…Jensen?" Allie sounds like she was sleeping, like she was deeply asleep, and Jensen knocks his head against the wall. He shouldn't have done this. He doesn't do things like this and it just goes to figure that the one time he does, he's fucking shit up. "Dude, I… What time is it? What…?"

"I'm sorry," he says. His nose is running, part of the chemical dump of panic into his bloodstream. "Forget it. Go back to sleep."

"No." He hears her mattress creak, hears a sleepy murmur in the background and wonders exactly what he's interrupting. "No, it's okay. I was just… Yeah, doesn't matter. What's going on?"

"I just…" He rakes a hand through his hair. "Can you come get me?"

"Yeah," she says. "I'm on my way. Where are you?"

***

**2\. Chad.**  
In retrospect, Jensen feels like he should have known that fucking _Mayhem_ would be the one to bring the whole house of cards down on his head. He knew the douche-bag was still bitter about the whole _Dawson's Creek_ thing. Ironically enough, Jensen didn't have to fuck anybody to get it; Doris Egan (who _adores_ him for reasons that seem to be completely non-sexual and he has yet to understand) put in a good word for him and the role was as good as his the minute he sat down for it. Not that Chad believed that for one second.

He'd confronted Jensen about it in some random bar, fucking _months_ later; long after he'd given Jensen a clap on the arm and said "Great job, man; good luck!" which just went to show what a phony, prissy little fuck Chad was, in Jensen's book. And how long he could hold a grudge.

Jensen had already been kind of wobbly on his feet; he thought his 'date' might have slipped him something. With the confused paranoia of the drugged, he'd been morbidly convinced that if he went home and slept it off like his every instinct was telling him to do, he'd never wake up, another Hollywood tragedy. And his mama would have to face that—her fucked out, drug-addled son, dead. So he'd gone out instead, sitting tensely in whatever fucking bar it was with his glass of seltzer water held between his white-knuckled fingers, waiting for it to go the fuck _away_.

Anyway, Chad had caught up to him in the darkened hallway to the shithole restrooms. Just come out of nowhere, shoved Jen up against the wall with his forearm against Jen's throat and said, "So, Jensen, is that come I smell on your breath or are you just _really_ glad to see me?"

And the thing is, Chad likes to do all the macho alpha-posturing bullshit but 1) he weighs, like, a buck twenty soaking wet and 2) he's kind of a pussy and very concerned about not fucking up his pretty face.

Jensen pushed the little sprite off of him, into the opposite wall and chafed his throat. "What the fuck, Murray? You gonna follow me into the bathroom too? Watch me take a piss?"

Not the wittiest thing he's ever come out with, but hey, possibly roofied.

Chad sneered. Jensen had read the words before, but he didn't know if he'd ever _seen_ anybody actually do it before now and God help him, but he found the actor in him taking notes. "Naw, man, cocksucking is your thing, right?" Chad stepped close into Jensen's space again and roofied or not, Jensen felt his fists balling.

"Back up, Murray," he said dangerously. And he didn't know if his voice supported it, but he _felt_ dangerous. He felt like he could really just fucking wreck this stupid, self-involved _kid_ right there and then, because he was scared and he was fucked up, with an ass full of lube and a belly full of come and he'd been all by himself—fucking _alone_ —for a long time and he'd _had it_ , you know? He'd just fucking had it.

Chad didn't get any further than, "What—" before Jensen belted him. Hard.

Chad went down like a scarecrow, all long, skinny, awkward limbs and Jensen stepped over him, not even checking to see if the kid's okay, wanting nothing more than to just get the fuck out of there and sleep and sleep and sleep until it was a new day and he felt strong enough and well enough to tote this load all over again.

He slipped out the emergency exit into the alley and got about twenty feet before he had to stop and puke, his heart throbbing in full-on panic attack mode.

So yeah. Jensen should have known Chad was gunning for his ass.

***

Allie pulls up to the curb in her sensible little Prius and Jensen pushes off the wall. He's a little steadier, though not much, and even that goes a little bit to hell when Allie unbuckles her seatbelt and comes across to sweep him up in a huge, ridiculously unnecessary hug.

"Allie," he starts and she says, "Shut up and take the hug, Jensen."

So Jensen does. And he hates that he wants it, that he needs it, that it feels so good. It feels so fucking… _typical_. The whole cliché, tied up in ribbon. But he can't remember the last time someone hugged him just to hold him.

Except that's a lie, because it was Jared and he remembers.

He can't fucking make himself forget.

***

**3\. Steve.**  
Jensen's always liked Steve (because Steve's one of those guys you can't _not_ like), but he thinks he really started to _respect_ Steve the night that Chris passed out on Steve's couch and Jen and Steve had gone out to the back porch to share a joint.

"Look, Jenny" –and Steve's one of maybe two people he'll take that hated _Jenny_ from— "You're a nice enough guy and all, don't get me wrong. But you're trouble. Mostly to yourself. S'like you just can't help it."

And Jensen might not have liked hearing it much, but he has to give it up to Steve for being man enough to say it to him.

He'd been less respectful when Steve started hassling him about Jared.

"What are you doing, man?"

"He's kind of young, in't he?"

"You sure you know what you're doing here, Jenny?"

And then, finally, sighing: "It's not like you didn't know it was going to turn out like this, man."

"What the hell do you mean?" Jensen asked, stung to be getting this and from the person he expected it least from.

"Jenny." Steve looked at him. "C'mon. You've been around. I mean, you've _really_ been around." That hurts. It'd never hurt that much before, but that time, Jensen tasted the blood. "And this kid's looking at you like you hang and set the moon."

"He…he what?"

"What'd you think he was going to do, man? Might have been different if you'd been upfront with him from the get-go, but that's not your style, is it? Not the super-cool Jensen Ackles, fool for none. Too much hassle, too much trouble, _too much_." Steve's voice wasn't cruel. It wasn't mean. That was the worst part. It was just this dull matter-of-fact tone, like an accountant reading out numbers. The hairs on the back of Jensen's neck rose up like a goose walked over his grave and he turned the burnt out roach between his fingers, smearing tar. "You turned that kid all around, fed him a bill of goods and then just about shit when he found out the truth. So I say again, what did you think was going to happen?"

"Nothing," Jensen said and put the roach down to drain his beer. "That's the fucking thing about it all. I didn't think about it at all. I didn't dare."

***

"So I take it drinks with the boys didn't go as well as expected?" Allie asks dryly, glancing at him from the corner of her eye as she navigates the route to his house.

Jensen shrugs, looking out the window. Now that she's here—and asking questions—he regrets calling her yet again. He should have just sorted himself out on his own, called that cab. He doesn't know what's happening to him. Too cool, impervious, on-top-of-things Jensen Ackles.

Allie sighs. "Look Jensen, you can start talking or…" She trails off.

Jensen raises his eyebrows. "Or what?" He struggles up in the seat, tries to take stock of where they are, fully expecting to be chucked out on the side of the road. It's not like she'll even be the first.

"That's pretty much your only option, actually," Allie says with a grin. "You can talk or I can grill you like this is Dragnet and my name's Joe Friday."

"Isn't that a little before your time?" Jensen asks. "Hell, that's before _my_ time."

"What, the movie with Tom Hanks?" Allie asks, wrinkling her nose, confused. "You know I love Tom Hanks." She takes one hand off the wheel and threads her fingers through his, tightening when he'd pull away. "Should I go with one of the Law and Orders instead? Ooh, maybe what's his name? The one from SVU with the serial killer eyes. Except I might break a nail, roughing you up. And I just got them done, see?" She waggles them at him, smiling.

The thought of Allie 'roughing him up' does the trick and Jensen snorts, his mouth turning up in an unwilling smile. "Can't have that," he says. Allie takes her hand back to make a left turn and Jensen looks down at his fingers spread across his thigh. Imagining _his_ fingers, curved so familiarly around that girl Sandy's hips.

_She's been living with me for three months._

"Jared's girl showed up," Jensen says. It's really kind of disgusting how small his voice comes out and he rolls his eyes at himself, staring out the passenger's side window again. "Sandy."

"Ah, Jen," Allie says sympathetically and a second later, her little, warm hand is back on his.

***

**4\. Tom.**  
Tom's not a happy guy, himself. Jensen doesn't know if Tom quite realizes that about himself, but it's true. Takes one to know one, right? On the other hand, Tom very much wants all of his friends to be happy and that counts for something.

That doesn't mean Jensen has to like it when Tom takes it into his head that what will make Jared happy is the absence of one Jensen Ackles in his life.

"Don't you think you've done enough?" Tom asks, squinting sidelong at Jensen in his 'don't kill the messenger' face. "I mean, Jesus, Jensen. He's a kid."

"You think I don't know that?" Jensen demands. And then he pushes. Because that's what he does. "What are you trying to say here, Tom?"

"You want me to spell it out for you?" Tom asks, the put-on affability fading away to show the relatively serious broody asshole underneath. Tom's jaw squares up like Clark's when he's got his self-righteous on. "Fine. I think you had your fun with Jared. And now I think it's time to let go."

"Yeah." It's not like he didn't expect different. Not from Tom, who's neck deep in issues of his own. It shouldn't make him feel lightheaded and distant, like he just took a heavy punch to the gut. "Yeah, fine," he says and grabs his keys off the table with a scrape. He shoves his chair back and gets up, Tom making half-hearted and totally meaningless protests. "You say hi to Mike when he gets here, okay? And Jamie."

That shuts Tom up.

Jensen just wishes he felt more satisfaction doing it.

***

"So…you going to be all right?"

Jensen's eyes are closed and his head tipped back on the headrest but he doesn't have to have them open to know what Allie's expression is.

He memorizes things. Not just scripts; anecdotes, jokes, patter about his shows, his co-stars, his family. It's how he copes. His mother called him sensitive and would give him a hug. His dad would call him nervous and slap him too heartily on the back. The impulse to say, _I'm always all right_ , is strong, tempting. He opens his mouth on it, inhales…and sighs. "I'll manage," he says instead and that feels like the truth.

"Jensen." Allie sighs.

"Seriously." He opens his eyes and rolls his neck and head sideways to look at her. "I'm doing the best I can, okay? I just…it hurts. It hurts to see him with her. It hurts to see _him_."

"I know." She touches his hand again and Jensen's kind of proud of the way he doesn't flinch away. "But he doesn't hate you. And it's getting better, right?"

"Yeah." Jensen scrapes a hand through his hair. "Yeah."

"If…" Allie hesitates, her eyes dark. "If it's too much… I can stay."

Jensen shakes his head. "Nah."

She doesn't push and he's grateful. And he's calm enough to be a little graceful about it. "Thank you for coming to get me," he says.

Allie makes a _psht_ noise and waves a hand.

"No," he says and touches her arm. "I mean it. Thank you. I don't… Thank you."

He goes inside and—after getting out of his clothes and into the first pair of "house pants" that come to hand—goes straight for the pack of Reds he's got stashed away. The nicotine helps smooth out the edges when it gets really bad. He doesn't smoke regularly, because it's a filthy habit and it'll yellow up his teeth and eyes and nails and turn his lungs to goo, but when it's really bad…when it's really bad, sometimes it helps.

It's really bad.

Working with Jared every day. Seeing him, _smelling_ him.

Touching him.

It's really bad.

Jensen goes out on the balcony because he doesn't want the smell in the house. He's just lighting up when he hears a voice—a familiar voice at that—say loudly, "Son of a _bitch_!"

And no. Just…no. It can't be.

Except he's not on anything, that he'd be hallucinating. "Jared?"

Jared's staring at him like he's seeing a ghost. And given the way Jared's eyes dip down below Jensen's waist, making his cock stir interestedly, maybe Jared _is_.

_Normal. Just be fuckin' normal, Jen. You remember 'normal', right?_

Jensen takes a lungful of nicotine.

***

**5\. Jensen.**  
Oh, come on now. What list would be complete without the myriad ways he screwed this up from minute one?

He doesn't even know all the ways anymore; he doesn't think he can count that high. And mostly, what he wants is to lie in his bed and never get up again. He wants to feel sane again. He wants to stop acting like some chick-flick heroine, moping around. He wants his life back.

Or really, in moments when it's really bad, when it's so bad he can't be anything _but_ honest with himself, he wants his life with Jared back.

_I was nineteen when I let the first one fuck me,_ he said. But that wasn't really true, was it? It was a lie. He knew it when he said it.

_Fifteen. I was fifteen. The first was Troy._

God, it'd hurt. It'd hurt so much, because Troy was all about 'feeling the burn' and…and…

And he hasn't thought about this in years. Not really. Not what it had meant, to be a fifteen year old boy, held down while your mentor—your friend—fucks you in the ass.

He hates it. He hates that he let someone—anyone do that to him. He hates that he liked it, Troy manipulating his cock and his prostate until he'd asked for it, begged for it. He hates that he _thanked_ Troy.

After that, knowing that, being that, after having that happen to you…what good are you supposed to be to anyone ever again?

He doesn't want to think about this anymore. He _can't_. He still feels fragile, breakable from his earlier outburst, from being 'normal' with Jared out on the balcony. He needs to rebuild himself for morning. He strips down to naked and putters around, putting his watch, wallet and keys in their designated spot on his dresser, putting his shoes back in their box and the box on the organizer shelf. He puts his clothes—stinking of booze, of smoke, of alley—in a plastic bag so they don't infect the others and then tosses them in with his dirty clothes. He refills the glass of water on his nightstand exactly halfway and puts two Ativan next to them, in case he needs them in the night.

He's walking past the mirror when he sees the bruise. It's small and blood-dark and easily overlooked in the rest of his ache. But he knows where it he got it, how it happened.

_Slam._

_"Well…maybe not. Get off me."_

_He hadn't really wanted Jared to get off him, though the way he was sprouting wood it was probably the best idea. Especially with the whole crew watching and all._

Jensen prods it with his fingers, an electric twinge that zips cold-sweet up his spine and makes him shudder. His teeth catch in his lip, breath hitching a little. It zings in his cock too, the sight of it, the feel, an ache that Jared's left on him.

Sometimes he wonders what would happen if he just laid it all out on the line for Jared, one big emotional outburst of, _I love you, I want you, I need you._

Jensen snorts. Jared would probably say something like, _Who the hell are you and what have you done with Jensen, you fuck?_

Ignoring the seductive and sensual siren song of his bed, Jensen drops to the floor and resigns himself to push-ups until he's sure he can go to a sleep without dreams.

***

**_And The One That Saved Him._ **

**Allie.**

Jensen had always gotten along with Allie, but everyone does. She's like Steve that way. But it had all been very casual, a 'hey how's it going', beers after work kind of friendship. Nothing heavy. Because everyone knows Jensen can't handle anything heavy, right?

Right.

When it all falls apart, Jensen finds himself carrying an inhaler for the first time in years. Not that he really has asthma, but when his lungs constrict and close up, they don't know the difference. Ironically enough, Troy—who _was_ asthmatic—taught him that trick, the very first time Jensen had a panic attack. Jensen wonders if Troy thought it was just coincidence that it happened at the same time he wanted to fuck Jensen again. He wonders if Troy thought about it at all, other than making sure Jensen didn't die at his place.

It's probably less than a week after Jensen fucked it to hell and gone and it's like he's got this bleeding hole in his chest. He's flubbing lines like crazy, and since most of his lines are with Kristin, that means a lot of takes and long days.

Anyway. He's falling apart. And he _knows_ that he's falling apart. But he can't make it stop.

_(Why can't I make it stop?)_

He's freaking out. He's falling apart and he's freaking out and the one person he thinks he might possibly be able to tell about it is the same reason that it's all happening in the first place, so _that's_ out. And Jared hates him.

Jesus, Jared hates him.

And between that and the realization that there almost literally is no one else he can call sets him off so bad he has to leave the set, begging too much sun. He hides, finding the smallest, darkest space he can cram himself into. And he's crying, man. Honest to god crying like a little girl, and it's not even because he's _sad_. It's because he's choked up and wheezing as his throat and lungs throttle off. He fumbles the inhaler and it falls into the thinning grass.

Jensen gives a little half-sob—about all his starved lungs can manage—and scrabbles for it, his fingers clumsy and uncooperative.

"Jensen?" The sound of Allie's voice, the touch of her hand on his arm startles him. He jumps and the inhaler falls away from him again. "Oh, Jesus, Jensen, what?" She crouches down next to him, grabs the inhaler, wipes the mouthpiece off with the tail of her shirt and then shoves it between his lips. Two puffs with the heel of her hand and Jensen's struggling to suck it in.

The chemical taste of the Albuterol flits across his tongue and he gasps one breath and then another, deeper than the first. He takes the inhaler weakly from her and toots a third hit of the steroid.

Allie just watches him, sharp blue eyes that miss nothing and yet still manage to be sympathetic. "You know, you're kind of an asshole," she says conversationally, when Jensen's breathing goes back to more-or-less normal. His heart's still triphammering like it's trying to claw its way out of his chest, but it's probably going to take a couple Ativan to fix that.

"Gee, thanks, Allie," he croaks, amused despite himself and she punches him in the shoulder. Hard. She's got bony little knuckles and a lot more muscle than Kristin.

"I mean it. Christ, Jensen, you could have died back here, hiding like a sick dog. What the fuck is wrong with you? You've been completely insane."

Jensen laughs. It turns into dry heaves rather quickly, but he swallows hard and chokes it all back. "I am completely insane, haven't you noticed?"

"Don't be smart, Jensen. It doesn't suit you," she says and it's like a slap. "I'm serious. And this may be the only time I'll ever give a shit enough to ask. Don't waste it."

Jensen shudders. So many last chances; what should one more matter?

It matters. It _matters._

"God, Allie," he says and breaks. His head falls into his chest, suddenly too heavy to hold upright. "I loved him. I do. I love him. I love him so much. It feels like I'm dying."

Her arms go around him, sudden and fierce. He didn't get that before, how…tiger-like she can be, blazing and unstoppable. "You're not," she tells him, a voice that allows no doubt, no question. "You're not dying, okay? You'll get through this. It doesn't feel like it now, but you will. I promise you. And I'll help." She hugs him tighter and Jensen thinks he can feel her holding his molecules together.  



End file.
